Saturday, 27 June 2026

LIST 260 – 27/06/2026

Hello again,

Well, that was an awful lot of fun!  I had no idea the Belle and Sebastian/Saint Etienne double header at Halifax's Piece Hall would fall upon Father's Day when I bought the tickets last autumn, but as the perfect finish to that particular day I don't think anything else could have topped it.




(Belle and Sebastian, Piece Hall, Halifax 21/06/2026.  Pictures are author's own)

Given the two acts to fit in before the strict 10.30pm local curfew, the "...and other songs" bit after the If You're Feeling Sinister run-through was shorter than it probably has been and will be for most of the rest of this tour, even before factoring in a short pause for a medical emergency also. I was still dead happy with it, though.

With the appreciable caveat of the lack of a full list on setlist.fm against which to check, I can say that unless they played any of them at Scarborough Futurist Theatre just the twenty five years ago this very week (26/06/2001, with me in the same Sarah Records t-shirt as I had on last Sunday), this will have been the first time I'd have seen all of Seeing Other People, Me and the Major, Fox in the Snow, If You're Feeling Sinister, Mayfly and The Boy Done Wrong Again live (as well as later tracks Reclaim the Night, Dear Catastrophe Waitress and Sleep the Clock Around).

Hopefully this link to my recording from the night of Get Me Away from Here, I'm Dying will work fine.  My gift to you all. 

No playing of their new World Cup track in the end, much less any mention of football at all other than in its rightful place deep into Another Sunny Day.  No matter; I've taken the liberty of including the similarly new but otherwise far more irreverent World Cup track from Lynks in this week's selection.

As for Saint Etienne, you may recall I'd wondered out loud on here last week as to whether their set would eschew much from last year’s International album and basically be a victory lap of hits. Turns out that's exactly what it was, with only Glad from that long-player making the cut on the night. I don't particularly mind that; heaven knows they've absolutely earned the right.  They did manage a segue into 7 Ways to Love for those who know!

And so to this week's other selections apart from Lynks.  The headline for me, I think, is the return of The Durutti Column.  Note the lack of italics; this isn't an appraisal of the enigmatically titled 1980 debut album by Vini Reilly, but rather an actual return of the Durutti Column. 

Vini's previously prolific nature has been stifled appreciably by his trio of strokes over 2010-11 and resultant difficulties in playing guitar as before, to say nothing of a financial hardship exacerbated by intransigence in the DWP benefits system.  Indeed, Renascent is his first collection of new material since that incapacitation, 2012's Songs for Pauline - the only other "new" release in the interim - actually being an abandoned album from 1983.

It risks doing the great man a disservice to suggest the playing on such as lead track Liars is that little bit more slight and basic than forty years prior - it's still agile, translucent, delicate and expertly crafted by anyone's standards.  With Vini now 72 years of age and regular drummer (and manager) Bruce Mitchell 86, any drop-off would have been forgivable, in truth.

Wittingly or otherwise, the endorsements in the past year or so from everyone from Dev Hynes to Harry Styles have done their bit in helping raise the band's profile again ahead of this return to meaningful action, and BBC Radio 6 Music's Marc Riley reassuringly wasted no time in bigging up Liars upon release.  

Quite what, if anything, lies ahead in terms of accompanying concerts is conjectural given the performers' relative antiquity and (where applicable) health issues, but one can be certain that any venture back into the live circuit wouldn't struggle for ticket sales.

How representative of Vini's body of work my four selections for A Session of Sorts are is for you to scrutinise at leisure, and the dominating, jackhammer electronic percussion of Arpeggiator (from 1987's stylistic handbrake turn The Guitar and Other Machines) probably polarises opinion as much now as ever it did.  Good, let it.

Elsewhere, the following may or may not count as highlights:
  • The first ever double-decker Then And Now.  With Panda Bear and Sonic Boom continuing their hitherto fruitful partnership with an out of the park knockout of a new drone-pop single which encapsulates so many of their respective strengths, it seemed the perfect opportunity to marry that to a previous highlight from two performers clearly sharing equal billing.  Angel, in particular, is one I came to a lot later than I might ordinarily have done, its omission from the CD release of Indie Top 20 Volume VIII owed to the track's near eight-minute length.
  • Other new or recent additions to my listening diet from The Linda Lindas, Grace Ives, Mike D, My Lo-Fi Heart and Otoboke Beaver. 
  • Electro People by Fox, which I briefly considered badging as an Isn't That...? feature.  I think its use as Kenny Everett's theme tune from more or less the time of the single's release is a bit too well known for it to surprise many, though.
  • A few weeks on from including his video cameo for The Loft, some more Stewart Lee, this time the setting to music of his tour de force dismantling of Paul Nuttalls of the UKIPs [SIC] by Asian Dub Foundation.  Can I nominate someone to do the same to his Richard Hammond routine, please?
  • Tracks by To My Boy, Topper and Those Dancing Days which I'd have put money on my having included in a List before now, but evidently hadn't.  The last-named is an especially egregious omission; it should really have gone into my collection of eponymous songs (q.v. List #232), had I had my two braincells in alignment at the time.
  • Following on from last week's bang up to date power pop treat from Wishy, an example of the genre from an altogether different era courtesy of The Raspberries.  Some will know already, of course, that this sexually suggestive 1972 US smash hit was primarily written and sung by future Hungry Eyes performer Eric Carmen, long before his hard rock went soft.  Matron.
J xx


Click on the video or link to play each tune (links last checked as all working 22/06/2026).


LYNKS - Kick the Ball (2026) 

THE WEDDING PRESENT - Jet Girl (1995) 

THE LINDA LINDAS - Burning Out (2026) 

FINITRIBE - Ace Love Deuce (Steve Osborne Remix) (1991) 


A SESSION OF SORTS: The Durutti Column
THE DURUTTI COLUMN - Liars (2026)
THE DURUTTI COLUMN - Arpeggiator (1987) 
 

IF WE DO, WE’LL KEEP IT ALIVE
THE HIDDEN CAMERAS - The International MMA - The Mild Mannered Army (2002) 


GRACE IVES - Stupid Bitches (2026) 

FOX - Electro People (1981) 

ASIAN DUB FOUNDATION ft STEWART LEE - Comin’ Over Here (2020) 

DAVID LYNCH – Are You Sure (2013) 


GOODIER BEFORE WHILEY & LAMACQ
AIRSTREAM - Airstream (1992) 

COMPILED BY CHET & BEE (AND SOMETIMES TIM)
THE MOTORCYCLE BOY – Big Rock Candy Mountain (1987) 


MIKE D - What We Got (2026) 

THOSE DANCING DAYS - Those Dancing Days (2007) 

THE RASPBERRIES – Go All the Way (1972) 

MY LO-FI HEART - I Know It So Well (2026) 


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Saturday, 20 June 2026

LIST 259 - 20/06/2026

Hello again,

So, for those of you who are following it, how's your World Cup going?

If you're Belle and Sebastian, it's going alright.  Whatever else might come to pass, Scotland's victory over Haiti is likely to prove sufficient to secure a last-32 position on the team's first trip to the Finals in a generation.  Try telling them and hundreds of thousands of Scotland fans that the expansion of the Finals to 48 teams is a detrimental development.

How things go against Morocco (this week's blog will have automatically uploaded literally halfway through that match) might yet just determine whether attendees of this weekend's two runs through the entire If You're Feeling Sinister album, in Dundee's Caird Hall and Halifax's Piece Hall, find the band cautiously optimistic, very happy or delirious.  As Linda and I will be at the latter, I'll let you know next time.

In the circumstances, it seemed only right and proper to open (kick off?) this week's List with Belle and Sebastian's own brand new contribution to the football song genre.  

It's a characteristically delightful, nostalgic, self-effacing and amusing rumination on most of a lifetime spent watching the national team try and fail, on not being the kids who'd get Scotland back on the world stage as they thought they would, and so on.

It also rehabilitates the band's relationship with football, in so far as they have presented it on record, anyway.  No referee giving them nothing as in Another Sunny Day.  No protagonist not wanting to take orders from a moron as in I Don't Want to Play Football.  Just an expression of the joy (and anguish) of the game, for the joy of the game's sake, evidently free of cynicism.

The Halifax gig (and indeed certain others on this tour) isn't just about a welcome opportunity to see the headliners once more, however.  From a gig-going perspective, at least, it'll afford me the chance to pay a fond farewell to the soon to retire Saint Etienne, the Sheffield leg of their valedictory autumn tour having sold out whilst I was still lacing up my proverbial boots.


(Saint Etienne (yes, they're in that first photo somewhere) - Indietracks Festival, 30/07/2016.  Pictures are author's own)


Quite the right moment to give Sarah, Pete and Bob the A Session of Sorts treatment, therefore, albeit finding a representative - but none too obvious - sample from their 36-year body of work minus the sixteen tracks already featured in previous Lists took a bit of work.  

I was certain that something from the final International album needed to be included for completeness sake, and it's just a lovely bonus that my choice, a collaboration with the excellent Confidence Man, is accompanied by a jolly Scooby Doo-aping animated promo replete with surprise cameos.   

I must admit to a little trepidation beforehand upon learning just how stacked with collaborations International was, with Orbital, Erol Alkan, Nick Heyward (a busier man himself just now, of course, with Haircut 100 newly reactivated), Vince Clarke and The Chemical Brothers all contributing.  Happy to report, it's still intrinsically a Saint Etienne album, rather than sketches of their ideas buried too far under other people's arrangements.  

How much of it is getting an airing during the current tour dates is an interesting question, with, one would suspect, a quorum of attendees hoping more for some sort of victory lap set rather than too many deep cuts.  I could answer that question myself with a quick check on setlist.fm, but where's the fun in that?

Many other nice things in this week's List, of course, of which a few to note include:
  • Another Forgotten 80s selection in the shape of Wexford-via-New-York singer-songwriter Pierce Turner.  Debut solo album It's Only A Long Way Across, from which Orange Coloured Sun is taken, was produced by no less a figure than experimental composer Philip Glass - perhaps the driving influence behind some of the sonic trickery in the choruses here?  
Fellow listeners to Piccadilly Radio in the 1980s may remember Orange Coloured Sun being routinely rechristened Orange Coloured Socks by Tony "The Greek" Michaelides, whenever played on his visionary new music strand The Last Radio Programme.  Such was his sense of humour: the late Stu Allan's hip-hop show Bus 'Diss would similarly always be retitled Bus Pass.  

A wildly successful promotions executive, as well as a highly gifted broadcaster and public speaker over the decades, I will never not have Tony to thank for many mid-1980s discoveries that I still hold dear today - The Desert Wolves, Mirrors Over Kiev, Old Ma Cuxsom & the Soapchoppers, and so on.  You didn't get those on Simon Bates back then.

  • Then and Now treatment for Peaches, the Canadian doyenne of explicit, gender-prodding electroclash and no less arresting a presence over three decades into her career.
  • Other new or recent stuff from Wishy, Souad Massi, Rowena Wise and Man/Woman/Chainsaw.  If there is a better power-pop moment this year than Lovesick, the lead track from the first-named's second longplayer slated for later this summer, I'll be more than a little surprised.  It's genuinely, genuinely that good, and set to dominate my mental jukebox for the foreseeable. 
  • Having reminded myself of his comparably opulent baroque pop in last week's brief piece on Haute & Freddy, another chance to enjoy some prime Owen Pallett.
  • The Pere Ubu track mentioned en passant in my Eurovision 2026 review (trust me, it made sense at the time).
  • To finish, The Long Goodbye features by no means the only qualifier for this feature from Leicester's favourite identical twin filmmakers and spacerockers Matt and JJ Kerry (along with that city's go-to bassist nonpareil Gary Gilchrist), trading as The Freed Unit.  This won't be all you see and hear from its parent album in the coming weeks, either.

J xx


Click on the video or link to play each tune (links last checked as all working 18/06/2026).



BELLE AND SEBASTIAN - It Only Takes One Lion (2026) 

THE SHANGRI-LAS - Footsteps on the Roof (1967) 

MAX TUNDRA - The Gradual Disappearance From Food Packaging Of The Lettres Ornées Typeface Since The Nineteen Sixties (2000) 

THE MIDDLE ONES – Y.A.W. (2011/2015) 
(No video available - please click on this Bandcamp link)

CODY - Dovetails (1997) 


A SESSION OF SORTS: Saint Etienne
SAINT ETIENNE X CONFIDENCE MAN - Brand New Me (2025)
SAINT ETIENNE - Side Streets (2005) 
 

EUROTASTIC
RAINBIRDS - Blueprint (1987) 


SOUAD MASSI - Ana Inssan (2026) 

MY BLOODY VALENTINE - Glider (7” version) (1990) 

OWEN PALLETT - Lewis Takes Action (2010) 

ROWENA WISE - Blood Ties (2026) 

HALF MAN HALF BISCUIT – Bad Review (1997) 


THEN AND NOW: Peaches
PEACHES - Whatcha Gonna Do About It (2026)
PEACHES - I U She (2003) 
  

IF WE DO, WE’LL KEEP IT ALIVE
SHRAG - Unseasonal Thoughts (2012) 


(No video available - please click on this Bandcamp link)

MYSTERY JETS - Two Doors Down (2008) 


RAPPING SONGS
LL COOL J – Mama Said Knock You Out (1990) 

THE LONG GOODBYE
THE FREED UNIT - Yr Sister is a Junkie (1996) 

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Saturday, 13 June 2026

LIST 258 - 13/06/2026

Hello again,

It's a pleasure to be with you once more today, and a grateful thanks is extended to you all for dropping in for last weekend's Feature Fest #2 (List #258), which has followed its predecessor in being one of the most viewed pieces I've put together since reactivating the blog.  

I think there's probably mileage in doing these three or four times a year, at appropriately spaced intervals.  Let's see what the autumn brings in that regard, eh.

By the way, bringing forward the A Loved Album treatment of Tim Smith's Extra Special OceanLandWorld to last week has not proven to be a mistake per se (how could it be regarded as such?); but having been reminded that Cardiacs' Sing to God turned 30 years of age on this Thursday just gone (the 11th), I wonder whether I should have done that one this week and held out for a bit longer with the solo project after all!  

It's probably not giving anything much away to confirm Smith's absolute magnum opus was always going to be covered as A Loved Album at some point; astonishingly, of 16 appearances of Cardiacs in this blog's entire lifespan, just two selections have ever been taken from Sing to God, and neither of them its most revered track of all.  

For the time being instead, it's a trip back to 1989, and four tracks from Kite, the astonishing second album from the late and much-missed Kirsty MacColl.  

A greater sufferer by turns of record company interference, indifference or intransigence than most, Kirsty had to wait eight years between albums one and two (the next two would follow in little over four years, albeit even then for two different labels, one of whom could hardly have promoted their artist less).  

That alone could have helped fuel the mood so palpably evident in Kite, fundamentally a more angry, determined and strident record than its Kinks-covering breakout single might have led casual listeners to assume.

Angry, that is, but never screaming, as that was never Kirsty's wont.  It's hard for me to recall another performer so capable of conveying so many emotions in just the one broadly consistent deadpan delivery.  Kite's lead single, not actually the cover of Days but the self-penned Free World, would have been artlessly, over-aggressively spat out by less disciplined practitioners, whereas Kirsty's straight bat voice (and, for the greater part, straight face in the accompanying promo) handled the coruscating attack on the greediest and most unscrupulous amid the political classes most adroitly.

Disappointment, pity, boiling fury, wry amusement (and Kirsty was always far from humourless - everything from There's A Guy Works Down the Chip Shop... to In These Shoes? via the television appearances with French & Saunders and Raw Sex tell you that much), despair, feistiness.  Kite runs the gamut of these and more, with not the faintest recourse to jarring vocal cosplay.

Nobody's fool, but on occasion up to that point marginalised as if regarded as one, Kite stands as a vital, defiant piece of work and significant personal accomplishment by Kirsty MacColl.  I need hardly add that there is not a single track on it that she ought to be remembered for less than That Duet That's Out Every Xmas.

1980s contemporaries of Kirsty, if perhaps not all that frequent sharers of a stage given their respective distinct musical orbits, Vince Clarke and Neil Arthur remain pleasingly prolific into their dotage (genuinely: look at how many new Blancmange albums have seen the light of day in the past 15 years).

I wouldn't know whether Vince still harbours hopes of laying to rest one of pop music's longest standing hoodoos and finally write and perform a number one British hit single (Only You having reached the top as a cover, of course, and Vince having reached the summit in person performing an EP of ABBA covers), though he won't be doing that with the debut eponymous album of Clarke/Arthur/Benge analogue synth supergroup Doublespeak, consisting as it does entirely of covers.

It's still a fascinating artefact, the temptation simply to reinterpret the work of their familiar charting peers among the UK synthpop landscape eschewed pretty much entirely in favour of covers ranging from Fad Gadget to Laptop via Young Marble Giants and The Magnetic Fields.

Doublespeak the album is respectful, inquisitive, bright-eyed, open-hearted, true unto itself (Neil's voice seems to become more determinedly authentically Lancastrian with each passing year) and playful enough to whack in a David Essex number, because why not.  I've plumped for the trio's interpretation of the title track from ABBA's The Visitors, at least in part for its chilling resonance even today.

Much else besides these, naturally, and you may particularly like:
  • A personal highlight from the first Alvvays album, which I've somehow managed to overlook including on here until now.  Remind me, fellow Sheffield indiepop travelers - was it Molly Rankin of Alvvays or Tanya Donelly of Belly whom we had to spend part of a Leadmill gig convincing that Glossop wasn't a made-up town name?  I'm not sure whether we succeeded.  
    
(Yes, visiting international pop stars, Glossop is indeed a thing.  Here is YJ06 FXP, a 2006 Optare Solo M850 integral low-floor minibus, pictured in Glossop town centre on 26/08/2016 whilst working for Centrebus's High Peak operation.  Picture is author's own)

  • Further new or at least halfway recent stuff from Genesis Owusu, Tamikrest, Faith Eliott, Sulk Rooms and Pink Breath of Heaven.  The last-named, essentially the San Franciscan-based treat you can enjoy between My Bloody Valentine albums, were in fine form in Todmorden two nights back. 
Sulk Rooms, actually based in West Yorkshire rather than passing through it, may be seen to occupy broadly similar immersive electronic territory to those other present-day List favourites Craven Faults, though I appreciate I run the risk of doing either or both splendid projects a disservice.  A Hidden Life's parent album Songs Of Soil promises musical ruminations on the vastness of the Yorkshire landscape.  It delivers. 
  • One additional newish track that, among the many fabulous new discoveries I owe to listening to Joel Rigler and Steve Vickers' peerless Saturday afternoon Sheffield Live radio show The Breakdown, I've fallen for particularly hard in recent weeks.  Sweetly, simply put, Remember Monday might actually have gone a lot closer to winning Eurovision last year had they pulled off what Symphony for a Queen by Haute & Freddy does far more skillfully.  
I do like opulence in pop, though the tendency to throw too many flourishes and adornments into the mix to the detriment of the greater whole is always a risk.  Owen Pallett got the balance so right over a decade ago.  Army Of Lovers always did, too (and Massive Luxury Overdose as an album title left little to the imagination either).  Add Haute & Freddy to that list.  There's a lot going on; but whilst some of the most obvious theatrical 1980s acts have been cited as touchstones, might one suggest also some trace elements of It's My Party era Stewart & Gaskin, or even Hazel O'Connor?  
  • Not the last-named Coventry punk actress and performer, but rather an Australian Franciscan missionary namesake.  The early-1970s albums of Sister Irene O'Connor, subject of a long-overdue reissue late last year, are genuinely extraordinary - amalgams of (highly) devout and contemporary synth/acoustic guitar/primitive drum machine-driven folk tracks played in full by Sister Irene and devoid of any other involvement save for fellow Sister Marimil Lobregat's rudimentary production and engineering.  
You may have heard Fire (Luke 12:49) soundtracking Villanelle's baptism late in the run of Killing Eve.  However, you will definitely have heard its influence in plenty else before or since, perhaps nowhere more since TML returned than in the Katie Alice Greer track shared in List #241.
  • Finally, a Long Goodbye from Cornershop, and a further failure to rack my brains successfully in compiling this week's write-up.  I know that I saw Tjinder and company play the rump of Woman's Gotta Have It (still my favourite Cornershop album) live, concluding with an utterly mesmeric and even longer version of 7.20am Jullander Shere than the one shared here, whilst living in Germany.  I know I usually write down the details of every gig I go to in minute detail, too.  
Did I do so on that occasion, however?  Did I fudge.  I blame the quantities of ebbelwei in my bloodstream that year.  It must have been during the winter of 1995-6, and the chances are it was at the Kulturzentrum KFZ in Marburg, as many such British bands of the time played there.  Setlist.fm draws a blank, however, and the accursed Gemini's attempts at gaslighting me into believing the gig date was April 6th (when it was Stereolab that night) are just reminder enough again of the perils of entrusting these factual recollection requests to AI.  I don't suppose any of you out there were at the gig?

J xx


Click on the video or link to play each tune (links last checked as all working 11/06/2026).


POINTER SISTERS - Pinball Number Count (DJ Food Re-Edit) (2003) 

GENESIS OWUSU - Life Keeps Going (2026) 

APHEX TWIN – Ptolemy (19nn/1992) 

CSS – Alcohol (2006) 


A LOVED ALBUM: Kirsty MacColl - Kite (1989)
KIRSTY MacCOLL – Free World (1989) 


IF WE DO, WE’LL KEEP IT ALIVE
ENDERBY’S ROOM – My Old Friend (2013) 


THE PASTELS - Nothing to be Done (1989) 

DOUBLESPEAK - The Visitors (2026) 

ALVVAYS – Party Police (2014) 

SISTER IRENE O’CONNOR – Fire (Luke 12:49) (1973) 

TAMIKREST - Imanin (2026) 


DANCE HALL AT PEEL ACRES
*READYMADE* - Ninos (1990) 

A LOVED ALBUM: Kirsty MacColl - Kite (1989)
KIRSTY MacCOLL – What Do Pretty Girls Do? (1989) 


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Saturday, 6 June 2026

Straight In At... 06/06/2010 (originally published elsewhere)

Hello again,

As originally published on Twitter very early on in Straight In At...'s existence.  Here are all of the new entries for the official singles chart of June 6th 2010, including a smattering of Eurovision content; a future conspiracy theorist; and some child stars' ongoing growing up in public.  Enjoy.

J xx


Click on the video or link to play each tune (links last checked as all working 30/05/2026).




GLEE CAST - Beth
New at #98. The (count them) 58th hit accredited to the Glee Cast out of the (count them again) 148 all told between 2009 and 2019. A Kiss cover from Season 1, Episode 20, as all devotees will know. 

TOM DICE - Me and My Guitar
New at #85. Eurovision time! This finished sixth, and heralded the start of a strong decade for Belgium in the contest; Loïc Nottet, Laura Tessoro and Blanche would also attain top ten finishes. 

JESSY MATADOR - Allez Ola Olé
New at #81. One of my absolute faves from Eurovision 2010. Zouk or ndombolo? Not sure. It deserved better than twelfth place for this energetic French-Congolese performer. 

MADCON - Glow
New at #70. Not another Eurovision contestant, but rather the accompaniment to the Flashmob dance that comprised some of the interval entertainment during the final in their native Norway. 

TINCHY STRYDER ft TINIE TEMPAH - Gangsta? (Game Over)
New at #67. A promotional single rather than an official one, a good six months ahead of parent album Third Strike. Grinding, determined and confident. 

JUSTIN BIEBER ft USHER - Somebody to Love
New at #47. Originally offered to - and a demo recorded by - Usher, but ultimate instead the ninth solo or collaborative single of Justin’s UK breakthrough year. He hasn’t become any less ubiquitous since, of course. 

LENA - Satellite
New at #30. Lena’s “fine line between puppy love and psychotic obsession” (Huffington Post) cleaned up at Eurovision 2010, curious accent and all. What Germany would give for a result like that now. 

B.O.B. ft HAYLEY WILLIAMS - Airplanes
New at #23, and number one six weeks later. All about aeroplanes here, of course, as opposed to the drones, satellites, etc. this noted conspiracy theorist has since paid for to try to verify the Earth is flat. 

MILEY CYRUS - Can't Be Tamed
Highest new entry at #13, and the lead track of a third album intended to distance Miley from the Hannah Montana persona. Could have been written with the cat on this Twitter banner in mind, actually... 

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LIST 257 - 06/06/2026 (Feature Fest #2)


    (The Garlands - The Red House, Sheffield 01/08/2011. Picture is author's own)


Hello again,

Three months and twelve Lists on from the first Feature Fest, here's a sequel.

As you'll recall, the original Fest in List #245 attempted to include as many of this blog's 25 different regular features as running time would permit, and broadly succeeded.  Although I've managed to squeeze in just 18 this time compared to 20 last, it still means that every feature has had at least one run out inside the last three weeks, which is job done as far as I'm concerned.

There is also an element of responding to demand here, believe it or not, as the first Fest has returned the third highest number of hits of anything I've put up since reactivating the blog, and the second highest of any List (the Eurovision 2026 piece is second highest overall).  I'm not entirely sure why that should be.  Perhaps I just chose unusually well that week?

Either way, such is the age profile of most of the stuff which gets included in the features that brand new tracks are thinner on the ground than usual (as per List #245 also), with the glorious exception of something out only this week from the very much back in action Patrick Wolf.  

Absent for large chunks of the preceding decade plus due to various vicissitudes of life - burnout, being hit by a motorist, family illness, financial problems, etc. - a clutch of EPs and last year's cathartic, satisfyingly complex baroque pop treat Crying The Neck (his first long-player of totally new music since 2011) confirmed that the heart, and indeed the art, is still willing.

Fast forward to June 2026, and the forthcoming premiere of Wolf, a sensitive, moving yet unflinching biopic expertly narrated by Patrick's longstanding friend Tilda Swinton.  It's set to be shown twice during Sheffield DocFest in the coming week, once each on Thursday 11th and Saturday 13th - assuming this advice doesn't come too late, ticket details can be found here.

The Beast isn't being billed as a single to promote the biopic, if the blurb on Patrick's YouTube feed is any guide, but rather as one side of a standalone 7" released this week on his own Apport imprint ahead of an American tour.  Either way, it's a joy to include it, plus one dip into the past, here.  And a joy of course to welcome him back generally.

It would be a joy, of course, to be able to welcome back the late lamented Tim Smith in person also, but the activity of the born-again Cardiacs and associated offshoots in the past couple of years in particular have well and truly done the next best thing.  Until even recently, who of you would have had them turning out at Primavera Sound this week just gone on your bingo cards?  Be honest.

There's not been any new product release as such to mark the Barcelona jaunt (dare we hope for a DVD of one of this winter's concerts back home?), but a message on The Consultant's Memorabilia Collection website alerted me to the news of a digifile reissue and light-touch remastering of Tim's one solo album, Tim Smith's Extra Special OceanLandWorld.  This was on the list to cover in A Loved Album sooner rather than later anyway, but in light of the week's developments this seems as perfect a time as any.

I can't think of any other album in my collection that exceeds its modest brief so emphatically.  OceanLandWorld, very simply, is miles better than it actually needed to be.  

Recorded between 1989 and 1991 - "by way of penance", to quote from a typically autocratic contemporaneous statement from Cardiacs' shadowy puppet-masters The Alphabet Business Concern - my understanding has always been that OceanLandWorld was intended solely to serve as something, anything, for Cardiacs (or Panixphere, or solo Tim) to sell at gigs whilst they were on their financial uppers.

The early 1990s were often brutal for Cardiacs in general and Tim Smith in particular.  Rough Trade's collapse took down the distribution of their 1992 album Heaven Born And Every Bright with it, rendering it largely unbuyable for the thick end of three years after and leaving its main players sharply out of pocket.  

Production engagements, from Eat to Sidi Bou Said, would at least have helped keep the wolf from the door up to a point, and in the case of the latter act initiated a fruitful symbiotic relationship which would later on see Claire Lemmon and Melanie Woods become quasi members of Cardiacs, and not insignificant ones at that - Claire's unmistakable trills really helped make Sing to God favourites such as Dog Like Sparky and the immortal Dirty Boy.

At some point against this backdrop OceanLandWorld first saw the light of day.  It's far less noisy than the rocky, power quartet Cardiacs were in the process of evolving into, and not necessarily just because of its largely bedroom recording origins.  

To me the overriding vision is less any sort of "Ocean" concept that the album's title may have implied (fewer than half of its ten tracks are especially aquatically themed), and more one of creating a suite of inventive and eccentric, yet thoroughly accessible and coherent, charming English art-pop (and you can be assured Tim regarded it as pop, as he genuinely did all of his output, even the more abstruse examples).  There's not a throwaway doodle of a track to be found anywhere; Tim's commitment to the craft, even within the self-imposed strictures of this project, was absolute.

Although live performances of any of OceanLandWorld's contents are few and far between, certain tracks, notably the relatively tender ballad Savour (beautifully covered by former Cardiac William D Drake in the Leader of the Starry Skies benefit album in 2010), have subsequently become firm favourites among many fans of the Smith canon taken as a whole.  

I for one would be very happy indeed were present-day Cardiacs ever minded to have a stab at Ocean Heaven live one day, assuming Jim can reproduce Tim's lithe, rubbery bassline.  He can be sure Tim would be goading him from the beyond if he buggered it up.

Among the other features this week, you may or may not also particularly enjoy:

  • Les Rita Mitsouko. Because sometimes it's possible to have a monster hit at home with a five and a half-minute long amalgam of squelchy electro-pop, chanson and bossa nova. As announcements of statements of intent go, this debut single from 1984 took some licking.
The involvement of krautrock/kosmische godhead Conny Plank as producer perhaps makes a bit more sense when considering his first job was as a soundman for Marlene Dietrich. Perhaps he saw something similar in Catherine Ringer's presence, voice or both. No more than a guess.

  • My favourite track from the whole of 2015.  As I'm sure I've probably suggested when discussing Mbongwana Star beforehand, think PIL's Metal Box as if it had been independently conceived and created in Kinshasa rather than London.  Eleven years on, one assumes prospects of a follow-up are fading, sadly?

  • Three more nuggets of janglepop perfection from across the eras.  I only need to mention The Garlands by name to any of my Sheffield indiepop-loving contemporaries for us all to go misty eyed and coo over a certain special Monday evening at The Red House in summer 2011.  All of us in various states of self-inflicted misrepair following another outstanding Indietracks weekend, and then another gig the very next evening after... we couldn't possibly summon up the enthusiasm or stamina again already, could we?  Well.

  • DJ Carl Cox with one of my very, very favourite tracks of any genre from 1992.  Restless and labyrinthine, yet still a cohesive and fluent piece of work (especially compared to contemporaneous tracks from the likes of, say, Altern8, where you could really spot the joins), Does It Feel Good To You felt, and still feels, like a buffet of all of the things I'd really enjoyed in house, techno and acid up to that point.  
Having to fight for space and attention at the same time as 'ardcore dance and cartoon techno were at their commercial apexes, its peaking at an undeservedly low 35 in the official singles chart was perhaps inevitable.  For me, however, it's aged better than almost anything else of its kind from the era. 

Incidentally, I was this many years, months and days old when I learned Carl was, like me, born in Oldham, though he is of course associated with other parts of the country, and indeed world, rather more.

 

  • almost certainly the first appearance of an Estonian performer on That Music List outside of a Eurovision context, in the shape of Velly Joonas, poet, painter and to all intents and purposes the godmother of Estonian soul. 

A complete reworking of I See Red by Anni-Frid Lyngstad, Stopp, seisku aeg! features Velly's own lyrics on the vapidity of wealth and possessions, and an irresistible call and respond motif between a scraped violin and bubbly organ throughout which you'll be hearing in your sleep for days after.  

Piccadilly Records in Manchester alighted upon the 7" reissue of this utter gem on Estonian crate-digging imprint Frotee in 2015; I'll be forever grateful that they did.

  • an instrumental from eventual Sarah Records and Vinyl Japan favourites St Christopher, as taken from their 1993 Dig Deep, Brother compilation.  And for that release, dig deep they did, Rollercoaster being one of a number of hitherto unreleased gems on that compilation and played - to these ears, at least - primarily on a big theatre organ.  
Would that have informed the song title, I wonder; did they record it in, or were inspired by, somewhere in Blackpool such as the Tower Ballroom?  If memory serves the compilation's sleeve notes were noncommittal in that regard.

  • another instance of a Straight In At... date which has already been covered once before on my now mothballed Twitter feed of that name.  Enjoy three selections (two of them Eurovision-oriented, for those of you which withdrawal symptoms) from the official singles chart of this date in 2010, or take a look at the singles reviews I wrote back then in full, also newly reproduced on this blog.

  • an attempt at either an unofficial theme tune for, or else an open love letter to, the Indietracks festival from Lisa Bouvier, performer there in 2014 both as a soloist and as the singer of the reactivated Flatmates.  Every Year Until We Die sadly proved inaccurate, all of us having outlived this most perfect of indiepop events for five years and counting now...

J xx


Click on the video or link to play each tune (links last checked as all working 03/06/2026).


I LOVE POP MUSIC AND I WILL FIGHT YOU
LIZZO - Juice (2019) 

BULLETPROOF
RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE –Know Your Enemy (1992) 

THEN AND NOW: Patrick Wolf
PATRICK WOLF - The Beast (2026)
PATRICK WOLF - The Magic Position (2007) 
 

A LOVED ALBUM: Tim Smith - Tim Smith’s Extra Special OceanLandWorld (1995)
TIM SMITH - England’s
TIM SMITH - Savour 
 

FAVOURITE SONG OF THE YEAR: 2015
MBONGWANA STAR - Shégué 

COMPILED BY CHET & BEE (AND SOMETIMES TIM)
THE SNAPDRAGONS - The Things You Want (1988) 

EUROTASTIC
VELLY JOONAS - Stopp, Seisku Aeg! (1983) 

DOCH DER COUNTDOWN LÄUFT
DIE STERNE – Du hast die Welt in deiner Hand (2002) 

DANCE HALL AT PEEL ACRES
SCOTT BROWN - Healing Mind (1999) 

A TANGLE OF JANGLE
BASIC PLUMBING – As You Disappear (2017)
14 ICED BEARS - Sure to See (1988)
THE GARLANDS - Continue (Demo) (2011) 
 
 

WIR SIND DIE NEUEN GÖTTER
DIE FORM - Bite of God (1993) 

SCIENTISTROCK
GROWING – Peace Offering (2006) 

FABRIQUÉ EN FRANCE

LES RITA MITSOUKO - Marcia Baïla (1984) 


IF WE DO, WE’LL KEEP IT ALIVE
LISA BOUVIER - Every Year Until We Die (2013) 

A LOVED ALBUM: Tim Smith - Tim Smith’s Extra Special OceanLandWorld (1995)
TIM SMITH - Exploded
TIM SMITH - Ocean Heaven 
 

NO LANGUAGE IN OUR LUNGS
ST CHRISTOPHER - Rollercoaster (?/1993) 

STRAIGHT IN AT… June 6th, 2010
JESSY MATADOR - Allez Ola Olé (81)
TINCHY STRYDER ft TINIE TEMPAH- Gangsta? (Game Over) (67)
LENA - Satellite (30) 
 
 

I WAS AN ARMCHAIR RAVER
DJ CARL COX - Does It Feel Good to You? (1992) 

THE LONG GOODBYE
PROLAPSE - Three Wooden Heads (1997) 

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